Flexibility urged over North Korea

Powell told more incentives needed

October 27, 2004|By William Neikirk, Tribune senior correspondent.

SEOUL — Secretary of State Colin Powell wound up his whirlwind Asian journey Tuesday after hearing key American allies call on the U.S. to sweeten its plan to lure North Korea back to six-party negotiations aimed at dismantling its nuclear program.

While he found agreement in Tokyo, Beijing and Seoul over the need to resume six-party talks with North Korea as soon as possible, Powell ran into resistance about the way the U.S. is trying to get Pyongyang to rejoin the negotiations.

On Powell's last stop, in Seoul, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon said the U.S., his own country and other allies involved in the talks "must come up with more creative and realistic proposals so that North Korea can come back to the negotiating table as soon as possible."

That paralleled China's position, expressed to Powell on Monday. Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told Powell in effect that the U.S. is being too hard-line in dealing with the North Koreans, an indication that the Chinese favor an upfront U.S. pledge of assistance to Pyongyang.

"We wish the U.S. side would go further to adopt a flexible and practical attitude on the [six-party] issue," Li said, according to the official Chinese news agency, Xinhua. "China will make efforts to push for a new round of six-party talks at the earliest date in a bid to carry on the hard-earned peaceful process."

Call for patience

Li said the North Korean nuclear issue "is complicated and demands patience," implying that the U.S. should rethink its bargaining stance. But even before he came to Asia, Powell said the U.S. would consider assistance only if Pyongyang agreed to come to the table, and not before. And he gave no indication during his trip that he is prepared to soften that position.

The American stance is that all the issues related to North Korea's nuclear program should be incorporated in the six-party negotiations and not be dealt with in separate negotiations with the U.S. If assistance is to be extended, he said, it has to be worked out with the other partners--Japan, China, Russia and South Korea.

The secretary of state repeated that position during a news conference with South Korea's Ban, saying the U.S. "has a good proposal on the table. The way to move forward is to have another round [of talks], not have a negotiation with ourselves at a press conference."

Nonetheless, the sentiment for the U.S. to alter its negotiating position emerged during Powell's tour. Ban's comments about the need for Washington to be more creative were not initially translated into English for reporters.

The Pyongyang government is boycotting the talks and almost daily is unleashing rhetorical attacks on the U.S. for taking "hostile acts" against North Korea. Among other things, it cited the staging of U.S.-sponsored naval exercises in the region to check on possible shipments of nuclear materials.

The naval exercises, part of a multinational proliferation security exercise sponsored by the U.S., began off the coast of Japan this week, prompting protests from Pyongyang. North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said, "These moves only make the prospect of the negotiations dimmer as the days go by."

Passage in the U.S. of a human-rights law aimed at North Korea also could complicate the American effort to get the talks restarted. North Korea has sharply criticized this law, signed by President Bush last week, which calls on the U.S. to include human-rights issues in its negotiations with Pyongyang.

Asked whether the human-rights law would hinder resumption of the six-party talks, the South Korean foreign minister said human rights should be upheld everywhere but added, "The particular situation of that particular country has to be taken into account."

Election a complication

Powell came on his mission with another big handicap--the U.S. election. President Bush's opponent, Sen. John Kerry, has a different policy toward North Korea. He would negotiate with Pyongyang directly and not insist that all the other parties be at the table.

The secretary said several times that North Korea may be awaiting the election results to see whether it can talk to the U.S. directly. But Powell said the other allies are firm in their belief that North Korea's nuclear program should be negotiated among the six parties no matter how the election comes out.

In Seoul, he reaffirmed that policy.

"We hope that in the very near future that North Korea will see it in their interests to have the talks begin again," Powell said. Emphasizing the need for speed, he said, "Let's get going." Three rounds of six-way talks have brought scant progress.

Meanwhile, South Korea said that two mysterious holes found in a wire fence on the tense border with North Korea were probably used not by communist infiltrators but by a South Korean defector to the North. It ordered its troops to stand down from a high alert, The Associated Press reported.

About 60 miles north of Seoul, South Korean border guards found two holes in a wire fence at the buffer zone that has separated the two Koreas since 1953.